


measure once

by poalimal



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Blackwatch Era, Foreshadowing, M/M, Sexual Harrassment, Unresolved Sexual Tension, power differential, some misogyny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 10:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11378301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poalimal/pseuds/poalimal
Summary: A series of miscalculations.





	measure once

 

Reyes is completely silent on the plane back from Sydney.

'--You got somethin' you need to say there?' Jesse says, lifting an eyebrow.

For a beat it seems Reyes will actually go on ignoring him - but then he says, 'No, sir,' still staring blandly straight ahead.

So it's gonna be like that for a day or two, huh. Jesse bites back a smile. He's weathered worse tantrums.

 

* * *

 

Turns out to be a bit more than a tantrum. Jesse takes Ana's advice well, plays it cool, whistles all the way down the hall, grabs Reyes by the throat and shoves him backwards into the empty training room he just came out of.

'Transfer request denied, Reyes,' he says pleasantly, tossing Reyes down onto the mat. Course he goes down like a fuckin' cat. 'Now you wanna tell me what's got your panties all in a twist?'

Reyes stays laid out on the floor, doesn't push himself to his feet, just stares all the way up at Jesse, chest heaving. 'I wear briefs, sir.'

'That's real cute, nene,' Jesse says, crouching down. Reyes swallows down a scowl. 'You gonna show me next or you gonna answer the question?'

Used to be Jesse couldn't so much as breathe downwind from Reyes without him going red and monosyllabic. He isn't red now, sitting up, eyes fixed on Jesse's, hands briskly unbuttoning his cargo pants.

'See, sir?' says Reyes, eyes flicking down just once. 'Briefs.'

Jesse hides his shock behind a grin, makes a show of looking Reyes up and down. 'Well, _damn_ , Reyes,' nice and slow, 'this how you get all the girls?'

Reyes looks faintly bored. 'Don't want girls, sir.' Always a straight-shooter, that one. His eyes slide up away somewhere over Jesse's shoulder.

Jesse hums low in his throat. 'Oh, is _that_ what this is about? You want off Blackwatch 'cus your Commander won't fuck you.' Reyes snaps his eyes back to Jesse. Oh, does Jesse merit his attention now? He grins. 'Well lemme tell ya, you'd be barkin' up a hell of a wrong tree with Morrison.'

'--I know you'd hope so,' says Reyes, evenly, 'sir.'

Well, what _do_ you know, thinks Jesse; Babyface went and got clever on him! 'I think I'd hope I was working with a professional,' he replies, 'not a pretty little brat who threw a tantrum anytime he didn't get his way.'

Reyes ducks his head. 'Right,' he says, nodding, 'that's me, sir. I just bat my lashes and get everything handed to me.'

'Thought we already talked about you watching your tone, Reyes,' Jesse says, still smiling. 'Just 'cus I ain't Army-born don't mean I won't fuck you up.' Reyes looks like he's holding back a sigh. He still hasn't buttoned-up his goddamn pants, but it somehow feels like _Jesse's_ the one who's lost ground here.

Well. Might as well go for broke, then.

'Alright, enough bullshit,' Jesse says. Reyes stares up at him, appalled. 'I know you think the reason I said no is 'cus you're too young - but that's not it.'

'Sir,' says Reyes, hastily, 'we really don't have to have this conversation again.'

'Different conversation, same topic,' Jesse dismisses. 'Now, I am flattered--'

Reyes grits his teeth and flops back onto the floor, covering his face with his hands. His shirt rides up; Jesse can see all the way to his belly button.

 _Flattered_. Yea, that's the word for it.

He shakes his head at himself: 'But stuff like this has a real way of narrowin' things down.' He does not point out how narrow Reyes's field of vision already is. 'If we're out on the field, it's not just my back you gotta be worrying about - you gotta have everyone's back.'

'I can't have everyone's back if you do flashy shit that almost gets you killed, sir,' says Reyes, from behind his palms. Jesse leans forward over him, nudges away his hands. Stares for some moments, unhearing, at his mouth. '--don't care if you don't want me. Do you trust me? If I suggest something on an op, I need to know you're really considering it, not just dismissing it because you think -- I don't even know -- 'cus you think I'm too focused on _keeping the Commander of my team alive_. I won't work like that.'

So this is about Sydney, then. 'There's that tunnel vision again,' Jesse says, shaking his head. 'No one's asking you to work like that, kid.'

Reyes shifts his eyes somewhere to the ceiling. ' _You_ are, sir,' he grumbles. 'And I'm not a kid.'

'No, you just don't have a damn lick of sense in you, far as I can see,' says Jesse, annoyed. 'You came up with all these damn ideas about why I shot you down when really, it was just a bad call. There were civilians still in that sector, and those gas bombs coulda killed 'em.'

Reyes blinks up at him. Goddamn those eyes of his. 'You didn't tell me that, sir.'

'You didn't ask! You sulked the whole way home, and then you asked for a transfer request form. And now you're asking, do I trust you? Gabriel, do you trust _me_? You think I'd let a little thing like you wanting me get between us?' He shakes his head, trying to calm down, the heat of Reyes beside him an itch all along his spine.

'Y'know,' laughing to himself, 'maybe we are having the same conversation.' Woulda gone a lot differently the first time around if Reyes had flashed his panties, that's for damn sure.

'It's not the same,' says Reyes, 'because I'm not asking again. That's not what this is about. You already said no...and I respect that.' It takes a few seconds to parse his tone but then it clicks: Reyes is _embarrassed_.

'Rea-lly,' says Jesse, wry, buttoning Reyes back up, hot all from his fingers to the back of his neck. 'This is you, respectin' me.'

Reyes looks up at him heavily. 'Nothing you ain't seen before, sir,' he says. Nothing he can't see again. 'So you don't have to keep--letting me down, or playing me easy. I can take it.' And he shifts his legs apart, just a bit.

'You will take it,' Jesse agrees, mindless, patting Reyes's hip and ignoring the tremble he finds there. 'You'll take it for as long as I say.'

Reyes goes crimson up to his cheeks. '--Lot to unpack in that sentence, sir,' he says, gruff.

Jesse lets his smile show. 'Is there?'

Reyes narrows his eyes, assessing, assessing-- blinking, sharp. 'You don't trust me.'

'Wow, beauty, bulk, _and_ brains,' says Jesse, genuinely delighted. 'You SEP soldiers really got it all, don't you?' Jesse laughs - and then sighs when Reyes very obviously hides a flinch. 'Darlin'...I truly do not care how bad you want anything from me - you don't throw a fit when you don't get it. I can't rely on that.

'So you can keep asking - ask all you want, for whatever you want. And maybe one day I'll even believe you want it.'

Reyes kisses him.

 

* * *

 

He comes back to himself some time later, Reyes chasing after his mouth with his lips, eyes low and lazy with desire.

Jesse clears his throat, flustered, sitting back up slow. '--Boy, you just don't know when to quit, do you.'

'I figure,' Reyes says, rough-voiced, 'I got a few months of bad karma to work off. Won't have another chance to do that for a while.'

'Months?' Jesse scoffs, standing to his feet, not quite looking at him. 'Try _years_. Morrison's never gonna let me live this down.'  
  
Reyes pushes himself to his feet without looking for a hand up. 'As long as you say, right, sir?' he says, now eye-level. _Grinning_ , of all things.

Goddamn it. This kid's gon' be the death of him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> me, an optimist: surely it is possible for a civilian with no military designation to be granted the rank of commander!  
> the internet: lol nah


End file.
